It is done - the sewer that is!!

YES!!! Finally - something around here is 100% done!!!

WOOWHO!!!

Time to partay!!

The sewer is done!!!

The contractor showed up this afternoon to finish the job and here is photographic proof!!

After about two whacks with the backhoe bucket the top of the septic tank disintegrated and reveled the original tank.

Remember the second picture here?

Well, take a look...that is exactly what we have here. However, there are a couple of differences. Instead of a stretcher bond, like in the drawing, our septic tank is bed/bottom face bond. There might have been cement holding the bricks together at some time, but there there really was no trace of it. Also, each brick is the standard common type with the three holes in it. The holes were left open to help with filtering.

Look how deep down the bucket goes - and it's actually on the way up!

He was able to shove the bucket all the way down without hitting a bottom.

You can see the bricks better here and if you look real close you can see the holes.






This is the original pipe coming from the house.

What's really weird is there was a little water still coming out!! All we can figure is that the original pipe has so many holes and cracks that the ground water was seeping in and flowing into the tank. So, this helps explain why the tank was filling so fast - especially with all the rain these past three years.

The replacement pipe that was actually connected to the house (we think it was installed sometime in the 50s or 60s) was about two feet above this one.

Okay, the next few pictures will take some explaining.

Way back when we first got the house there was an icky outbuilding that had to come out. Due to all the trees, and debris, the guy who tore it down for us was not able to get all the foundation out.

So, for all these years we have had a small foundation wall over by the burn pit.

We decided to ask the sewer contractor if he would remove it for us and the cement could be used to fill the septic tank. He said "sure". The following pictures are of the removal.

Here's the little wall.

It is about 20' long. On this side of the bucket is a small bush; there's about 5' of wall on the other side. On the right hand side of the picture you can see a Catalpa tree sapling. There's about 3' more wall on the right side of the picture.

I was hoping this could be done without damaging either plant, but wasn't sure if this was possible.

So far so good...












Most of the wall is now out.

Along with it were several more bricks!





The interesting part was watching the contractor pick-up the pieces of cement with the bucket as if using a spoon.

All the cement is now gone AND the bush and tree were unharmed!

The Catalpa tree will stay where it's at in order to replace the one close to it that's getting really old. The bush will be moved either this Fall or next Spring.







This last picture is of a bone.

It's only about 3" long and so old it has yellowed.

The interesting part about this bone is that it came flying out of the ground when a piece of the foundation was removed, at the end of the run, by the Catalpa tree.

I have no idea how the contractor saw this thing from his viewpoint, but he stopped what he was doing and came to have a look at it. He asked me if that was all the cement and I said "yes". He looked at the bone again and said "this might be a good spot to stop at".

We doubt it's human (probably a soup bone), but it was under the cement. Neither of us wanted to find out if there were more bones. With all the stories about this place that's all we would need, the County CSI unit poking around.

Well, till next time...

Cheers!
Larry ~